All News articles – Page 5111
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Fortissimo to handle remaining sales on Pau's The Touch
Han Entertainment, Thomas Chung's nascent media empire, is to appoint fellow Hong Kong outfit Fortissimo Film Sales to handle outstanding territories on big-budget extravaganza The Touch. Produced by superstar Michelle Yeoh through her Mythical Films, which has a deal with Han, the film is the English-language directorial debut of Oscar-winning ...
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Director's Fortnight unveils six more titles
The Director's Fortnight (Quinzaine Des Realisateurs) came closer to completing its line up when it announced the selection of a further five films. These included Shane Meadows One Upon A Time In The Midlands, Lynne Ramsay's Morvern Callar from the UK, Romanian first film Occident by Christian Mungiu and three ...
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Digital pay-TV platforms fold in Spain and the UK
Two European pay-TV platforms, Spain's Quiero TV and the UK's ITV Digital have simultaneously reached the end of their struggles to survive.Spanish pay television platform Quiero TV, Europe's second digital terrestrial television platform behind the UK's ITV Digital (formerly Ondigital), is pending formal closure following a decision by shareholders to ...
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Annual amfAR AIDS research gala set for May 23 in Cannes
Cannes jury president David Lynch and jury member Sharon Stone will join other celebrities including Elizabeth Taylor, Elton John, Iman and Harvey Weinstein at the annual amfAR AIDS research gala. The event will take place on Thursday May 23 at the Moulin de Mougins restaurant and be sponsored by Motorola. ...
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Controversial Italian G8 documentary to screen at Cannes
New controversy is scheduled in Italy around the documentary Bella Ciao, about the riots at last year's G8 meeting in Genoa, which will screen in Cannes' Critics Week. The film, which was co-directed by the outgoing head of RAI 2, Carlo Freccero (under alias), was repeatedly rejected for broadcast by ...
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Germany's NRW film body awards Euros 9m backing
New features by Amos Kollek, Max Faerberboeck, Lone Scherfig and Peter Lichtefeld are among the projects granted over Euros 9m backing by Filmstiftung NRW in its latest round of funding. The highest sum - Euros 1.022m - was awarded to Bosko Biati Film's Spanish-German co-production of Lichtefeld's Playa Del Futuro, ...
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Saddam's Bombmaker is first acquisition for BBC Films' LA arm
BBC Films has optioned Saddam's Bombmaker, the autobiography of Khidhir Hamza, the former head of Iraq's nuclear weapons program who defected to the US in 1995. The project is the first acquisition made by BBC Films' new Los Angeles office run by Peter Kalmbach, who will oversee development and production ...
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Ice Age heats up international box office
20th Century Fox saw its computer-animated hit, Ice Age, pass the $100m mark in international box office at the weekend. With a total international gross of $104.3m, Ice Age is only the second film release on the international circuit this year to pass the watershed. The first was A Beautiful ...
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Cannes Critics Week selection announced
"More accessible," "less cerebral," are the watchwords used by chief selector Claire Clouzot to describe the line-up for the Critics' Week section at Cannes.The section will open with Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's Spanish thriller Intacto, in which every character is the pawn of another. It premiered at Sundance and has already ...
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Italy's antitrust body set to approve Stream/Telepiu sale
Italy's Antitrust Authority is set to greenlight the deal which will see Rupert Murdoch's News Corp sell Italian pay-TV platform Stream to Vivendi Universal, if Vivendi's Telepiu complies with new conditions regarding its ownership of pay-TV rights to Hollywood movies.According to unconfirmed reports, the Italian watchdog will demand that when ...
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Farrugia appointed chairman of Canal Plus SA
Dominique Farrugia (pictured) has been appointed chairman of Canal Plus SA, the principal French channel within the Canal Plus and Vivendi Universal empire. His appointment, which is subject to approval by Canal Plus shareholders at a meeting tomorrow (Friday, April 26), sees him replace Pierre Lescure at the channel. Lescure ...
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New support award for German cinema planned for Munich Filmfest
Leading German bank HypoVereinsbank has been joined by Bavaria Film and public broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk for an expanded version of its Director's Support Award which is presented during the next Munich Filmfest at the beginning of July.Now in its 14th year, the Euros 40,000 prize for directors is to be ...
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Brazil softens foreign pay-TV tax regulations
Brazil's Senate approved yesterday a more palatable version of new rules imposing taxes on foreign pay TV programmers, following a congressional nod last week. However, the original proposed regulations on new taxes and fees on film studios remain unchanged.Studios face an 11 percent tax on remittances and ...
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Can Hungary's Bridgeman cross-over to commercial success'
Historical biopic Bridgeman, the most expensive film ever produced in Hungary, opened last week with the country's fourth highest weekend gross ever for a local film. But despite national interest in the subject matter, controversy has erupted over the government's massive $2.5m investment in the $6m film, when the Hungarian ...
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MRP plans Finland's first digital cinema
Finland's MRP: Matila & Rohr Productions is planning to build the country's first digital cinema. 'We are building it from scratch,' Marko Rohr told Screendaily, 'it will have three screens and is the next obvious step for us in our ambitions to be involved in every part of the film ...
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Spain's MediaPro launches in to feature film production
Spanish producer and rights broker MediaPro has announced its fully-fledged entry into feature film production, with plans to produce and back between five and seven films per year.Newly appointed film chief Juan Ruiz de Gauna, former CEO of Via Digital, said MediaPro won't "just play a financing role, we will ...
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Japan's Toho posts record profit of $78.5m
Toho, Japan's largest film distributor and exhibitor, has posted a record-breaking net profit of $78.5m (Y10.29 billion) for the fiscal year 2002, ended February 28, an increase of 16.2% over 2001. The impressive profit surge is largely thanks to the unprecedented local success of Spirited Away, Hayao Miuyazaki's animated feature ...
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Lightning strikes with first acquisition: American Gun
Lightning Entertainment, the new LA boutique sales outfit run by Richard Guardian, has made its first acquisition, buying worldwide rights to the completed feature American Gun starring James Coburn, Virginia Madsen and Barbara Bain.Written and directed by Alan Jacobs, who last directed Nina Takes A Lover, and produced by Brent ...
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Alfonso Cuaron is guest director for LA Film Fest
Alfonso Cuaron, currently enjoying a major US specialized hit with Y Tu Mama Tambien, will serve as guest director for the 2002 IFP Los Angeles Film Festival which this year has moved to June (dates are June 20-29), started an international section and scored a host of new sponsorship deals. ...
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Peter Hoffman launches new sales arm under David Lamping
Peter Hoffman, chairman of Seven Arts Pictures, has launched an international sales division Seven Arts International and hired veteran David Lamping as president. Lamping will head into Cannes with a broad slate of films including the next pictures from Bronwen Hughes (Forces Of Nature), Paul McGuigan (Gangster No 1, ...